It is hard to think when your brother is dead. Especially when he is dead and yet he is standing right in front of you. Especially when he's dead and yet he is standing right in front of you and wrapping his arms around you and telling you he is sorry, so sorry, and please forgive him and he misses you and he didn't mean to worry you and things will be better now and he loves you.

Peter knew that what was happening could not really be happening. Nathan was gone. Peter saw his coffin go into the ground. He threw dirt. He cried, for goodness sake. But despite his realization that he was probably insane or hallucinating or high or something, he allowed his brother to hug him, and hugged Nathan back, biting his lip to control the emotions welling up inside of him.

Then, suddenly, Nathan was gone. The figure in Peter's arms grew taller, thinner. Suddenly the friend embracing Peter was an enemy. Peter tried to leap back in shock and disgust, but a few minutes later, he realized that he hadn't moved, that he continued to embrace Sylar, clutching at him as though he was drowning in pavement beneath their feet. Sylar chuckled.

"Not who you were hoping for," he said.

Peter gasped for breath. "Don't... don't... don't touch me."

"I don't really have a choice, now do I?" Sylar asked, gesturing at Peter's arms, which were still clasped around his neck. He pried them open and stepped back. "Poor little boy," he said, smirking. "Lost his brother and now he's all alone." The force of Peter's powers knocked him backwards as the man suddenly pushed at him with all of his telekinetic force. Sylar pushed back and stood up. "Pathetic," he mocked. "You're like a kid. Worse maybe, at least kids know that taking on people stronger than them will probably end badly. Maybe you'd do better fighting one of them." Before Peter's eyes, Sylar vanished, to be replaced with a little girl with brown hair. "Or maybe..." the child stretched, her hair bleaching to blonde and shifting into soft curls.

"No," Peter said. "You're not her. You're not Claire." He focused his energy on attacking the girl in front of him, but Sylar blocked his shot.

"No," Sylar said in Claire's young voice, a voice that made Peter ache, he had not seen her for such a long time... "I'm not. Maybe I'm..." Now the cheerleader became an older man, whose scruffy hair and beard mostly covered what Peter knew to be large ears and kind eyes.

"How did you do that?" Peter asked, astonished.

Sylar looked a bit surprised. "Same way I did it the last three times." His tone became derisive again. "You're losing it, little boy. Losing it without your big brother to protect you. Or your cheerleader girlfriend."

"She's my niece," Peter said through clenched teeth. "How do you know who he is? You've never seen him, you've never met him, you've..."

Sylar laughed, and Peter knew that at least one of them was insane. "How do you know? Maybe I have met your invisible buddy." As proof, Sylar disappeared.

Peter's head was reeling. He lashed out, feeling Sylar move around him, trying to hit him, to kill him. "Where are you?" he yelled. "Where the hell are you?" From somewhere in the darkness, he was answered with a disembodied laugh.

Then a pressing, crushing darkness. A darkness of hands and legs and lips and Peter fought and pushed and ran. And ran. And ran.